


Putting Up With Such Nonsense

by NightComesSwiftly



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mystery, mormor, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightComesSwiftly/pseuds/NightComesSwiftly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Season 3. Moriarty has returned, but has made no movements so far. Life goes on as normal, until Mycroft Holmes attempts to employ his younger brother in an important assassination case. Sherlock refuses, but at the crime scene Mycroft unexpectedly encounters Detective Inspector Lestrade, whom he has met only once before. Together they find themselves caught up in a web of murder and piracy, a web presided over by a very familiar spider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Putting Up With Such Nonsense

On the night of May fourth, 2013, it rained, first falling soft as a hush then gradually working itself up into a tantrum that would have rivaled Sherlock Holmes on one of his bored days. It was going to be an important night to remember, anniversaries were dangerous if forgotten you know, but that was knowledge that the universe had decided to keep a secret.   
On this night of unexpected importance, Mycroft Holmes was facing the unpleasant prospect that an already difficult day was about to cascade into an equally difficult evening. When one holds a seat of ambiguous (high) power in the British government most days are difficult but May fourth, 2013 had been particularly… Cumbersome. No, Mycroft thought, cumbersome wasn’t quite the word. Terrible was less eloquent but it served its purpose more effectively, nothing about the day had been elegant.  
Sometime last night a political prisoner had managed to commit suicide in an entirely empty cell. Ching Shih, a formidable Chinese hit-woman captured last month had seized the opportunity to hang herself by her prison-issue shoelaces and the guards discovered her body in the morning on the way to interrogate her. Mycroft was sure that it was the morning she would finally reveal the name of her employer but, well, these things happen.  
While he had been attending to that manner a second political prisoner offed himself in a room with no rope, knives, or pills. Vsevolod Avilov, a Russian hit man brought in only weeks ago had bashed his head continuously against the wall of his cell until he lost consciousness. He died later in an ambulance loaded with armed guards, blood sloshing around inside of his skull. Mycroft had always considered Avilov to be a touch out of his mind and his violent suicide proved it. The hit man’s insanity had been working in the governments favor in the weeks he had been available to them, the assassin’s mouth spewed secret knowledge like a broken fountain. Of course, the actual name of his employer had never come up, only detailed accounts of his living quarters and arguments with his boyfriend, which was almost a dead giveaway anyway. The men upstairs had given Mycroft hell for allowing such precious secrets to slip down the drain and the older Holmes brother did not have the guts to explain that it really wasn’t his fault. These things happen.  
If the double suicide hadn’t been enough, hours later a delicate sting operation in Gaza had blown up in Britain’s face. Four spies, all close friends of Mycroft had their cover blown in enemy territory. One had died and two were captured, leaving the last injured and on the lam. The whole thing had led to more hell from upstairs.   
Mycroft Holmes, however, was still clinging onto a desperate man’s hope.   
There was an assassination, only days old, nameless (it had been kept under wraps the size of a circus tent), and currently sitting unsolved, waiting for some brave, clever man to crack. If the assassin was caught, Mycroft supposed, all the paperwork concerning this nightmarish day would be shoveled onto some unsuspecting intern, and the older Holmes brother could cash in a few of his vacation days.  
There was one hole in Mycroft’s grand design, and it glared at him like the eye of a whirlpool. He was clever certainly, but far from brave, and this case would require legwork. He was no detective. It was, though he hated to admit it, a job for a different Holmes, a younger Holmes, though he refused to even think that.   
A quick search through the security cameras he controlled revealed that his brother was currently showing off at a crime scene near One Great George Street. Mycroft packed an umbrella. He did not need a wet suit to add to his misery.   
But the universe, with all of its secrets, had something planned, and misery was not going to be a problem for very long.

 

“You misjudged the angle of the shot.”  
“Excuse me?”  
Sherlock sighed. “The angle of the shot,” he replied, glancing up from his crouching position beside the body, “you misjudged it.”  
“H-how-,” Lestrade began, blinking, “y’know what? Sod it.” He turned around, shaking his head. “Donovan!”  
The sour-faced detective joined them at the scene in two long strides. “Yes, sir?” She asked, purposefully keeping Sherlock’s hunched form at arm’s length.  
“You sent Anderson into the parking garage,” Sherlock said without missing a beat, effectively cutting off the Detective Inspector’s words, “where you believe the assassin fired his rifle.”  
“Yes,” Lestrade replied, rolling his eyes none-too-subtly, “although I did say ‘sod it’”.   
“Your assumption would be correct,” the consulting detective continued, “had the bullet entered the victim’s head at a seventy degree angle. You thought yourself very clever, for you noticed the hole in the otherwise smooth wall, the perfect size for the nose of a gun.” He pointed to the parking garage, which, though abandoned, was in remarkably good shape except for the odd cave in.  
Lestrade nodded, dreading Sherlock’s point, if he ever managed to make one.  
“There are several things wrong with this conclusion, “ the dark-haired man said quickly, “first of all, it wasn’t a seventy degree shot, but a sixty-nine point five eight shot, not much of a difference I know but enough to shift the assassin’s position slightly, making it impossible for him to have fired his weapon from the hole in the wall. That angle is impossible to achieve in that manner, but easy if the assassin was leaning out of a window of the apartment building directly beside the garage.”   
The detective pointed a slender-boned finger at a dark pink building. “Third floor,” he said, “judging by the orientation of the building and the spacing of the windows I’d say you’re looking for a room 3L.” Sherlock smiled, crouching again next to the body and sliding out his magnifying glass.  
“Detective Inspector, should I-“ Donovan began.  
“Yeah, yeah,” Lestrade said, waving her away.  
“Kindly ask the lab not to estimate next time, would you?” The consulting detective murmured, not looking up.   
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,” Lestrade replied sarcastically, storming off to a nearby police car.  
Sherlock heard a light chuckle to his right and glanced up at the man suddenly standing beside him.  
“You know he hates it when you do that,” John reminded, still laughing.  
“Oh of course,” the crouching man replied, “I could have expressed myself in less than three sentences. I don’t do it because I have to.” He smiled, drawing up the edge of his soft bow lips. “Honestly John, use your head.”  
“Makes the boring cases just bearable, does it?”  
“Yes, that and the occasional pick-pocketing.”  
“Mmm.”  
“And embarrassing Anderson.”  
“Well, of course.”  
Both men laughed, earning them some of the coldest glares John had ever seen. Grimacing somewhat, the doctor remembered that they were, in fact, at a crime scene, standing over the body of a recently emigrated Chinese tax attorney. His laugh suddenly became a scarcely believable cough, and then he decided to just keep his reddening face pointed at the asphalt.  
“The victim’s name is Zheng Yi. He came here less than three months ago.”  
Both men looked up, startled, to see a tall and lanky man in a suit twirling his umbrella absent-mindedly.  
“Mycroft!” Sherlock shouted, getting angrily to his feet, “What are you doing here? This case is of no importance to the British government!”  
The older Holmes brother sighed, rubbing his forehead.  
“I’m not here about this Sherlock,” he said tiredly, wondering if anyone noticed the deep circles under his eyes. “I require your… Assistance, with a minor issue of national security.”  
“No,” Sherlock said flatly, crossing his arms in the manner of a pouting child.  
Mycroft pursed his lips. “Imagine what Mummy would think if she could see such impudent behavior.”  
“Where do you think I learned it from?” Sherlock replied mockingly before turning his back on his older brother and squatting next to the body. “Go away Mycroft, I’m busy.”  
“It was worth a shot,” Mycroft said with a sigh.  
“It really wasn’t,” the consulting detective murmured, not turning around. John gave Mycroft a sympathetic shrug before he too turned away.  
Mycroft frowned. This was going to more difficult than he had originally expected.

 

Lestrade glared angrily at his watch. Sherlock had been at the crime scene for exactly six minutes and the Detective Inspector was already pissed off. The record was two minutes. Not for the first time Lestrade wondered if he would ever be able to get away with murdering Sherlock Holmes. He concluded that there was about an eighty percent chance of being caught, but he doubted anyone would blame him. In fact, a jury might even deliver a verdict of not guilty by reason of performing a public service.  
So caught up in his thoughts was he, that the Detective Inspector did not notice the tall man walking in front of him, and the two collided, the stranger’s umbrella toppling to the ground.  
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” the man said, stooping to retrieve the umbrella.  
“No, it was my fault, I wasn’t paying attention.” Lestrade looked up as the man stood again, observing that he was impeccably dressed, but also looked incredibly weary.  
“I’m sorry,” the man said after a moment, extending a bony hand, “Mycroft Holmes.  
Lestrade shook his hand incredulously. “Yeah, Mycroft, we met once. I’m Greg.” He blinked. “Sorry, Detective Inspector Lestrade, you're Sherlock’s older brother, right?”  
“Yes, I'm sorry I never formally introduced myself, though you were just considering murdering my dear brother.”  
“… Sorry?”  
Mycroft waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t blame you, he can be exceedingly difficult.”  
Lestrade smiled, crossing his arms. “Oh, don’t get me started on Sherlock Holmes…”


End file.
